McLaren's career has progressed at an immense pace. At the age of 15 he drove his first races in New Zealand. It was here that the Australian Jack Brabham became aware of him, who brought him to the Cooper factory team in 1958 . McLaren set the first record a year later, when he was the youngest driver to achieve his first Formula 1 victory at the age of 22 years and 104 days . This record was only broken 44 years later by Fernando Alonso , who celebrated his first Grand Prix victory at the 2003 Hungarian Grand Prix at the age of 22 years and 26 days. The current record holder is Max Verstappen , who won his first race at the age of 18 years and 228 days. In his second World Cup season, McLaren was runner-up behind his teammate Jack Brabham.
After this time, the Cooper team could no longer build on its successes. McLaren continued to drive for this team, but began to design their own racing cars. With these in-house designs, he drove for the team he founded in various racing series. In 1966 he got out of Cooper and founded his own Formula 1 racing team. In the early days of the McLaren team , he drove without teammates. The McLaren M2B was his team's first construction and scored three championship points in its first season. In 1968 Bruce McLaren managed to sign his compatriot Denis Hulme , who had been under contract with Brabham until then , for his own team.
Bruce McLaren at the Nürburgring in 1969
With McLaren and Hulme as the second driver, things went better for the team in the years that followed. They finished the 1968 season in 3rd place (Hulme) and 5th (McLaren) in the drivers 'championship and finished second behind the Lotus team in the constructors' championship . In the following season in 1969 Bruce McLaren was third in the drivers' world championship. For 1970 , the New Zealander was considered one of several World Cup favorites because the reigning 1969 World Champion ( Jackie Stewart ) with the new March was not considered to be so dominant. But things turned out differently.
He had a fatal accident on June 2, 1970 during a test drive in a CanAm -McLaren in Goodwood . In this accident, the rear panel of the vehicle was torn off as a result of the high contact pressure, the car crashed into a wall at 200 km / h, Bruce McLaren was thrown out and died.
After his death, the team was continued by his wife Patty, whom he married in 1961 (daughter Amanda was born on November 20, 1965) and team manager Teddy Mayer .
New Zealand
